TU NO SABES FOOTBALL

There was quiet surrounding the city this morning. There was a blanket of sun that engulfed my balcony that stretched it glowing arms into my bed and woke me from a peaceful sleep. Even the wind was calm, which is uncommon for the beach side.

The mornings in Spain serve as reflection, which is evident in the corner cafes filled with somber gentlemen smoking fragrant tobacco and donyas perusing newspapers over desayunos.

The walk to school was even more quiet this time, the only difference today is the number of flags hanging from windows, the young natives wearing red, the cars painted with bulls.

Football is serious here.

The country is in preparation. The country takes a collective gasp and prepares for the great match this evening. The gasp is not tense, it is pregnant, quite deliberate and self possessed. The beach sways with bodies dressed in red, silent and harmonious, and full, as if the whole city took the day off in composition for tonight….

The German students in class commiserate at the end of the table. This is uncommon. But I know they feel something coming. They whisper to one another, much like immigrants who talk of sudden flight, before the country becomes too volatile. The teacher comes in donned in a red Spanish jersey. Class begins and group of wayward native youths traverse the street singing, “Yo so Espanol, Espanol, Espanol”.

I am afraid for the German students. I wonder if they have their passports on them.

Yan, the more distinguished, advanced German student lets out a nervous laugh. Martin, the young vigorous German student who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish laughs and jokes with the teacher.

“Allemande is bueno, verdad?”

“Mentiroso!!”

The class laughs. Tension is broken.

After a small repast and review of vocabulary some of the students get on the 11 bus and go to town, la plaza de la marina, a l’avenida de Cervantes, to see the sights and to sit in bodegilla to drink café.

The main streets of the town resemble little Africa more than a sleepy fisherman’s town on the south coast of Spain. The impact of the dark ages is resplendent in the architecture. There are women completely covered pushing carriages speaking Spanish, who stop what they are doing 5 times a day to pray.

It’s 2 pm. I am lost on calle de San Juan and the street is completely desolate. Siesta has begun. But today is exemplified, exacerbated. The streets are bare, save dust that dances in the calm winds, kicked up from unpaved streets and dirt walkways that separate villas from cafes. Flags hang in almost every window, waving to the pressure of the fans behind them. No one is Spain has air conditioning. Or at this moment, anything to do.

It’s 3pm. I sit in bodegilla and order a café con leche. A beautiful skinny Dominican girl smiles at me and asks me for my order. I am no longer the only Black person in Malaga. She gives me my order and a small vanilla ice cream, which apparently very commonly paired with café at this time of day.

It’s 4pm. I get on a bus going back to my flat. I watch the town from the window in the back of the bus and try to decipher with my remedial American ears what is going on with the young couple sitting in front of me, holding hands. They are in love. I don’t need to know their language to know that. I remember.

No one speaks of this evening, even though, the closer I get to the beach, the more flags wave from windows. There are bulls on the flags on the building where my flat is. I am a Taurus, so this makes me smile.

It’s 6 pm. I wake up and shower and ready myself to meet my classmates at La Pedraga, the bar for students on the north side of the beach. I leave the flat with nothing but my camera and notebook. As soon as my feet hit the dirt road, the vibration is palpable. People line the calle and speak quickly; young natives take shirts off and paint each other’s bodies in the open. Girls smile at boys driving by in cars adorned with bull flags. Donyas sitting at tables in corner cafes watch small babies running in the street holding banderitas. Men smoke cigarettes and talk jovially in corners.

It’s as if siesta has rebooted the city, or perhaps it was just a patience; waiting the Spaniards are capable of that I have never seen in the states. This morning this same town was all about business, almost in morbid fashion, but now, now the calle is so alive you can taste it, as if the moment you touch someone, your body becomes an electric mascot, a pulsating bandera, dancing to the rhythm like the banderas in the windows in town. I walk by a young couple who smile at me and call me morena. I smile back. The boy paints the colors of Spain on my face twice, one flag on each cheek. No one asked whom I was pushing for, as one might, seeing as how I definitely don’t look Spanish. It hasn’t even been established that I was going to watch the match. But everywhere it is assumed. And now, it is arrayed on my face. The girl kisses me on the lips. I smile sheepishly and walk towards the bar.

The sun doesn’t set until about 10:30. It’s almost 7 and the sky is like fire, casting a sensual dazzle on the dark sand around the bar. People drink beer with no shoes on. Children are naked wading in the water. Dogs run and fetch on the sand. Everywhere smells of beer and sticky sweet honeysuckle. A woman comes up to me and touches my hair.

“Morena.” She says.

She wants me to buy her flowers.

“Yes.” Yan from class comes up behind me and purchases the flower for me. He smiles. He is very tall with a deep voice, but his smile gives his gentle nature away immediately.

He takes my free hand and leads me into the bar. I am sitting with the Germans. I am painted with the colors of Spain. The German flag looks almost the same, save that German flags have a black stripe.

Yan looks at me. The woman sitting next to us paints his face in Spanish colors.

“Tu eres Allemande?”

“Si”.

She paints his face anyway. Her husband smiles.

I spot the others from class in some seats ahead of us, the young people, smiling, attractive, a little drunk. I see Kelly, a pretty American girl from Chicago with a wide smile and warm eyes. She smiles at me like the girl from the welcoming committee during everyone’s 1^st week of college. I realize, looking at her, that she has always been my favorite.

Now the bar is packed. There is a man dressed like a clown who is entirely too drunk. He starts the songs before the match begins. Yan buys me a glass of red wine. I drink it and start to feel it immediately.

There is a beautiful Spanish girl with thick brown curly hair who is wearing a flag and not much else. She sits on the lap of her muscular boyfriend and screams Spanish curses at the TV. She reminds me of me. It occurs to me that no one here would make that connection. Immediately I think of my friends back home. I smile. Yan asks me what’s wrong. I coyly respond that I am fine.

The 1^st period ends and no one has scored. Almost in unison, the bar exits and perambulates to the beach. It’s 9pm, and the sun is half hanging lazily in the sky. The beach is still illuminated. The air is still warm and sweet smelling. I wade my bare feet in the water and watch the young people from my class smoke cigarettes and flirt with natives, fall in love for just a night, make memories they will take back with them at the end of the summer. Martin is on the beach in a German jersey, smoking a cigarette, laughing with another boy from the school. His laugh is macho and boisterous, but sincere all the same. He is an alpha male, a man’s boy, but against the backdrop of young beautiful drunk women he is reduced to an awkward teenager, laughing nervously with his male friends.

The 2^nd period has begun. I go back into the bar almost last, as I was caught up in my own reverie on the beach. It happens to me a lot when I am on the beach, when I can stare out into the water and feel sand caress my feet and remind myself that the same God who made that beautiful scene, made me. I have always felt that when you are in a moment as such, homage should always be paid, no matter where you are.

I return to my seat and am offered another glass of wine, which I decline. Yan is speaking Spanish to some of the natives sitting behind us. I envy him, as I am not brave enough yet to try my Spanish on a native speaker. I turn around and smile. The native asks me a question in brisk Castilian. I respond, “Viva Espagne!!”

Everyone laughs. My secret is still safe.

Now the match is tense. People get up from their seat more and yell at the TV more. A strikingly attractive native gets mad at the ref’s call and jumps up and punches the wall. I am excited by the show of unbridled testosterone and take out my camera and try to get a picture. Just as I turn it on the bar explodes.

“Goal!!!!!!!”

“Yo soy Espanol, Espanol, Espanol!!!!!”

The bar croons in celebratory unison. I watch the pretty Spanish girl and her muscular boyfriend exchange a deep celebratory kiss. His hand is on her bare thigh. She digs her nails into his strong bicep. I like where I am, not visible, but still in the middle of this feeling.

I start to sing as well. The couple behind me smiles and pats me on the back.

3 minutes left. Germany has the ball. It occurs to be that there is a Black man on the team. The 3^rd one I have seen in as many days. He is tall and sweaty and attractive, and visibly frustrated, his gait is still proud, but a bit defeated, and instantly I am reminded of the colored boys back home, and how much I miss one in particular….

The match ends. Again, we depart for the beach. Now, it’s 11pm, sunset, and time for dinner. The young people adorn themselves with flags, the native take off shirts and jump into the water. Dogs run up and down the beach and bark at the noise from horns and cars and screaming girls and cursing men. Grown men kiss. Some women scream. Pictures are taken. I stand on a wall separating the main calle from the beach and take pictures. I see the pretty Spanish girl with her boyfriend. She puts on another flag and walks away from him, towards a group of girls who greet her with kisses and hugs. I watch her intently as she receives love from her companieras and observe them sit close to me on the wall. They converse casually and half drunk about the match, and about their day and about their approval of her new boyfriend, and wish her luck, as I can gather, as she is going to court tomorrow to fight the father of her child (I cant tell if it’s a girl or a boy) for child support. She kisses the tiniest one on the lips and they walk back to her boyfriend, locked with their arms around one another’s hips.

I begin the walk back to my flat, wave to the young people from school who are still on the beach and who still want to drink. As I walk away, I see Martin talking up close to a slight, Castilian girl who finds his jokes hilarious and his German blond hair irresistible. I say a silent prayer of encouragement for him.

Calle Juan de Sebastian is calm again. It occurred to me as I approached my flat that it always was, it was always serene, it was always orderly, It was I who was not used to it, It was me who had to become acclimated to such deliberate and ordered frenzy, culminating in abounding joy and fiesta.

“Viva Espagne!!!” a half naked native on a bike yells at the top of his lungs as he rides by me.

“Viva Espagne!” I yell back. He looks at me and smiles.

He has a beautiful smile.